Election, impartial judgment and the law in Second Temple Judaism

Says God "will repay each one according to his deeds" (2:6) and "does not show favoritism" (2:11); "the doers of the law" will be declared righteous (2:13).

Impartiality was an old confession (Deut 10:17; Sir 35:12–13, Brenton 32:12–13; Jub. 5:16; 33:18). Many texts joined it to confidence in Israel's election: God chastens Israel but scourges its enemies "a thousand times more" (Wis 12:22); the Psalms of Solomon join doing righteousness to God's choice of Abraham's seed (Pss. Sol. 9:4–5, 9); 4QMMT urges works of the Torah reckoned as righteousness (C 26–31).

In Sanders's account (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 1977), this pattern is covenantal nomism: one enters the covenant by grace and stays in by obedience. Westerholm (Perspectives Old and New on Paul, 2004) and Seifrid (Christ, Our Righteousness, 2000) reply that, on their reading, Paul still denies justification by works of the law.

Implies Judgment according to deeds is real and impartial (2:6, 16), yet it is not a second way of salvation alongside faith: all are "under sin" (3:9, 23), and "no one will be justified" by works of the law (3:20) but "by faith apart from works of the law" (3:28).

Uncertain Conservative interpreters read 2:7, 10 and 13 in two ways. (a) Paul states the law's standard, which no one meets apart from Christ: 2:13 grounds 2:12, and 3:20 concludes. (b) Paul describes believers, whose Spirit-renewed deeds are the fruit of saving faith, evidence rather than ground, as the Spirit fulfills the law in 2:26–29 and 8:4.